Saturday, 1 July 2017

Battles I Have Known

It has recently been a little
quiet around here. This is for two reasons, at least, two that I am prepared to
admit publicly. Firstly, as I mentioned, I now have a semi-permanent wargame
set-up, and have, therefore, been playing a few wargames. One of these has been
the first outing for my ancient galleys and, hence, the first outing for my
ancient naval rules. They worked quite nicely, if rather bloodily. Or at least,
lots of rowers got wet. Ancient galleys tended not to sink, just fill up with
water, so ancient rowers, who were not slaves in general, but well paid
professionals at least in Athens, and could swim, generally survived unless the
seas were rough. This of course was assisted by the fact that most naval
battles took place fairly close to land.

An interesting aspect of this is
that the sea battle was fought in the context of my 360 BC campaign, and the
fleets were the Persians against a bunch of pirates, with a couple of Athenian
galleys supporting them. This is a bit awkward in context, because the
Athenians have just agreed to a treaty with the Persians, and used their army
to bully the Corinthians into repudiating their newly signed treaty with the
Persians. It could all get a bit interesting. Furthermore, I now have a
campaign within my campaign as the Persians, having achieved their aim in the
sea battle of being able to land their expeditionary force on the island, now
face a land battle.

The second reason for the
relative silence on the blog is that I have been on a road trip. As we chose
one of the hottest days in decades to start this, it had its moments of
considering that we were mad. Of wargaming relevance, however, was the number
of battle sites we drove past. I have probably missed a few along the way, but
these are the ones I noted along the way or just off:

The Battle of the Standard

Halidon Hill

Flodden

Doon Hill

Pinkie

Prestonpans

The interested reader can, of
course, take note of where I started to take records, and, roughly speaking,
where we were going.

The point I want to make is that
history is all around us, if we only stop and take note. Stopping to take note
is not something that modern society is particularly good at. It takes time,
effort, knowledge, understanding and interest, all of which seem to be in short
supply these days. It is far easier to rush on, to take in the next sight, or
look at the next army in the lists and by the relevant Osprey.

In wargaming too we hurry along,
for the next fad is waiting. We slosh the coffee in, not waiting to smell it. This
presumably is how coffee shops can get away with selling such terrible coffee.
The world waits for us, but it has to be mediated by a screen. I do see
students doing the cartoon thing of walking into stuff and people because their
attention is no their phones.

The problem here, in terms of
wargaming, is that we only paddle in the shallow end of history. Yet interpretation
is vital. After all, if Scotland were not Scotland with its history and
culture, there would be no independence issue. That there is an issue is because
over the centuries Scotland has been framed as an idea, a construct, a meaning,
a nation. It is, to pinch Benedict Anderson’s phrase, an imagined community.

Granted the border is marked, but
actually the grass is no different on either side. Nothing changes but
everything changes; the change is in our heads. So, for example, I might paint
the most wonderfully accurate figures for Thai armies of the 1490’s, and I
might fight wargame after wargame with them, against historic foes with
historic outcomes, and I will probably enjoy them, as I like wargaming. But for
me the battles have little meaning. In context, this does not matter. I can
create the meaning for myself – a narrative, an account of winning and losing.
Is this not enough?

I suspect a Thai would attach
different and perhaps deeper meanings to the wargames and armies. After all, Australia
attaches a rather different meaning to Gallipoli than historians of the First
World War do, or historians of, say, Canada. Foundational myths (in the
technical sense of myth) are important.

Historiography gives
interpretations of events. These are meanings of which the actors may well have
been ignorant. Some actors do act self-consciously, of course, and attempt, in
a sense, to impose their own interpretations on events. But history has the
last word, or, at least, a series of last words.

Except in wargames, battles are
rarely simple in start or end. The meaning of a battle is freighted with
context, fraught with issues other than winning or losing. The English won at
Pinkie but did not win the war. Anglo-Scottish hostility only really assuaged
after the Scottish reformation, although English damage and destruction to the
Scottish church and polity has some influence over events. However, the Scots
becoming Protestant was the catalyst for improving relations.

I can, and have, wargamed Pinkie.
It is an interesting battle. It has a naval contingent, a still largely
medieval army facing a semi-modernised one, and desperate charges of
men-at-arms against pike blocks. Its meanings are multiple, of course. There
are questions of modernisation, nationality, state building, international
relations and power, religion, winning and losing, chance, necessity and all
manner of other factors. But which do we own? Which do we care about? And if we
do, why do we care about them?